She would not be put off, and, for a wicked moment, my heart was hot against all that bore her husband’s name.
“The brand was, ‘R, half-circle, A,’” I said, and bolted out of the house to hide myself and my boiling indignation in the hayloft, but, as I went, I heard Mrs. Horton sobbing out an explanation to Jessie:
“Jake started out early this morning, long before sun-up, it was, to drive the cattle from the upper range to the north pasture—he said. I told him I was afraid that he couldn’t handle such a big bunch alone—there’s nigh three thousand of them, if there’s a dozen—but he thought that he could, and they must have got away from him after all!”
Jessie made no comment, but lying at full length in the seclusion of the hayloft, I thought of the relative positions of the upper range, where Mr. Horton’s cattle usually grazed, and the north pasture, and knew that, in order to reach our fields, the herd must have “strayed” at least five miles out of their proper course.
I was still lying in the hayloft when, as my ears informed me, Mrs. Horton came out, climbed soberly into her wagon, and drove away. With my eyes shut I still seemed to see her drooping head and shamed face. I had so far recovered my reason by this time that I could feel for her; she believed in her husband. He would soon be able to convince her that what had occurred was due to an unavoidable accident; the cattle had broken away from their one herder, and she would expend her indignation on the fact that he had attempted to drive them alone, and—she would try to make him pay damages. She would fail. One did not need an intimate acquaintance with her husband to know that.
The sound of approaching wheels aroused me from my unhappy meditations. Joe was returning. I sprang up, slid down the ladder, and went out into the yard to meet him. Mr. Wilson, the ranchman, who was to be one of our witnesses, was with him. Joe had found him at the blacksmith shop, and, as his homeward route led past our house, had invited him to ride with him. The two were talking earnestly as the horses stopped before the barn door. Mr. Wilson had been away from home for some weeks, and we had been somewhat worried lest he should not return in time for our proving up. Evidently Joe had just been telling him this, for, as I came near them, he was saying in his hearty way: “No, sir; your young ladies needn’t ’a’ been a mite worried for fear of my not getting around in time. I was bound to come when they wanted me, and wife’s been keeping me posted about their notice. I told her I’d leave whatever I had on hand and come in time, whether or no.” He was a large man. Joe had resigned the reaper seat to him and had ridden home himself standing on one of the cross-bars. He was slowly and cautiously backing down from the high seat as I stopped beside the reaper. When his feet were fairly on the ground he turned to greet me: “Why, what’s been happening to you, little girl? Joe, you didn’t tell me that one of your young ladies was sick!”
Joe had begun unharnessing the team; he was tying up the lines, but dropped them as Mr. Wilson spoke, and came around to my side; just then, too, Jessie joined us; she stood with one hand on old Joe’s shoulder, while I again told of the incursion of cattle on our fields. I think that she feared some terrible outburst of rage from the old man who had toiled so faithfully in those fields, and had taken such honest pride in the rich promise of an abundant harvest. If so, her fears were groundless. Joe’s sole remark, as he went on with the work of caring for the horses, was:
“Mought jess as well a’ spared de trouble ob gettin’ de reaper fixed, hit ’pears.”
Instinctively, I felt that he was so sure, he understood so well by whose agency the ruin had been wrought that he disdained to ask a question. What had taken place was simply a thing to be borne, like martyrdom.
But Mr. Wilson was not committed to a policy of silence; he had a good deal to say, and what he said was directly to the point.